Thanks for the Link, New York Times. Now Please Answer My Question.

It went to spokesperson Catherine Mathis, Oct. 17: Did Judy Miller have special clearances to see classified information? If she did, who knew? Here's my case for why readers deserve an answer. No progress so far.

“Bloggers Discuss the Miller Case,” said the headline at the Times site Tuesday. They certainly do. “The following headlines, published in the past 24 hours, link to posts by bloggers that discuss Judith Miller and The Times.” Wow, nifty new feature. Times tells readers what bloggers are saying about its Miller report. Posts were listed in order of popularity; first on the list for the first few days was (wow again) PressThink’s round up of key moments in the report, plus reactions.

“This couldn’t happen with a better story,” wrote Jeff Jarvis, who called it the Judy feed.

Len Apcar, editor of NYTimes.com, says they’ll do more of this now that they’ve brought on Philippe Lourier of The Annotated Times to help aggregate blogs and other content.

This is a good step. The Times is now linking out to those linking in; the Washington Post has been doing likewise with Technorati help. That finally starts to get papers into the conversation, including conversations critical of them.

Thanks, New York Times, for linking to my post, which was critical of the New York Times. This corresponds more to my idea of you: strong enough to point to criticism, open enough to occasionally join the conversation.

Now please answer my question. I sent it just after midnight on Oct. 17 to Times spokesperson Catherine J. Mathis, who has kindly answered other questions I’ve had. I know I’m not the only one asking, and there’s much more going on at the New York Times than a blogger’s question. But I think it’s important. And I know a lot of people at the Times would like to have an answer. This is what I asked her:

Did Judith Miller, as a reporter for the Times in 2003, have any special security clearances that would have allowed her to handle types of classified information off limits to other reporters and editors of the Times? Her first-person account seems to say that Judy Miller herself doesn’t know if she had such clearances. It also says they were asked about in her grand jury testimony. Can the Times clear this up?

1.) Did Judith Miller, as a reporter for the Times in 2003, have any special security clearances that would have allowed her to handle types of classified information off limits to other reporters and editors of the Times?

2.) If so, what did the publisher and executive editor know about such clearances and where they came from?

I received no reply, so I e-mailed midweek asking if there would be a reply. Nothing. I tried again Thursday. Catherine Mathis then wrote back with:

Jay,

You saw the reference in today’s Times?

Best, Catherine.

I had, so I e-mailed back:

I certainly did.

Are you saying that answers my question?

And are you saying that on this matter—whether she had special clearance to receive classified information—Judy Miller’s answers in today’s paper speak for the New York Times?

Which would be quite amazing. No reply to that, but I didn’t expect one. Mathis (who has been helpful to me in the past) seemed to be saying: I’d like to give you an answer, Jay, but I have none to give. Or I’m not allowed to. Or something.

In Thursday’s Times an article by Katharine Seelye said that Miller’s claim to have special “clearance” was doubted by some journalists and military people. They said it was probably just a “written agreement to see and hear classified information but treat it as off the record unless an ad hoc arrangement was reached with military hosts.” This is what other embedded reporters signed. Seelye talked to Miller about it:

In a telephone interview Wednesday, Ms. Miller said this so-called nondisclosure form was precisely what she had signed, with some modifications, adding that what she had meant to say in her published account was that she had had temporary access to classified information under rules set by her unit.

Her story as of Thursday: she meant to say it was that nondisclosure form everyone signs. But sitting there at her computer, composing the account millions would read, she just couldn’t think of a way to phrase “nondisclosure form,” so she went with “clearance to see secret information” instead. Along with, “Libby might have thought I still had security clearance.”

What the New York Times has not figured out yet is that Judith Miller is an extreme example of the unreliable narrator. She increases our doubt in the story as she tells it.

Over at Romenesko, author and Army Major Bob Bateman (7th Cavalry Regiment) sent a letter to journalists about the confusion he thinks Miller intentionally created with her published account (Oct. 18). (He’s taught history at West Point, and wrote a book about the shooting of civilians at No Gun Ri in the Korean War.) Bateman calls the nondisclosure form “a waiver.”

As a result of signing that waiver hundreds of you embedded with us and were exposed to classified information. But that is not the same as having a “security clearance” as Ms. Miller claims she had during her period here in Iraq.

Understandable mix-up between similar things? No way, according to Bateman:

Of course, as a “expert” on such issues as biological and chemical warfare, Ms. Miller must surely know the extreme difference between signing a DoD Public Affairs waiver and actually having a Security Clearance. (By the way, does anybody know if she contends it was a clearance for “Classified”, “Secret”, or “Top Secret”?)

We don’t, but the word most commonly used when Miller boasted about it was “secret.” (See this document, sec. 1.3 Classification Levels.) Bateman, writing from Baghdad, gives reporters on the home front a hint:

Now I am comfortably sure that if there was a security investigation of Ms. Miller (which is, naturally, a requirement to gain a security clearance) the results of that investigation would be classified, or at a minimum restricted under the Privacy Act. But, as some of you here taught me when I was researching No Gun Ri, the fact that an investigation was (or was not) conducted might well be an element of public information.

One big difference between signing the nondisclosure form and gaining security “clearance” is that clearance—the real kind—requires a labor-intensive background check, which Bateman calls “a security investigation.” Therefore one way to establish whether Miller had a (real) clearance would be to find out whether a background check was done. Her employer might know, which is one reason I directed my questions to her employer.

Bateman says there may be ways to get the information, if it exists. (See this page for what he may mean. Also Kathy Gill’s page.) Of course it’s possible that Miller, princess of the realm in national security reporting, was just puffing up permissions and restrictions that weren’t substantially different from every other embedded correspondent. From Katharine Seelye’s story (Oct. 20):

When asked if she had ever left the impression with sources, including Mr. Libby, that she had access to classified information after leaving her assignment in Iraq, Ms. Miller said she could not recall. “I don’t remember if I ever told him I was disembedded,” she said. “I might not have.” But she added, “I never misled anybody.”

WASHINGTON — Officials from the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon say they have no idea what New York Times reporter Judith Miller was talking about when she claimed to have been given a “security clearance” while she was embedded with a U.S. Army unit in Iraq in 2003.

No one from the White House commented. On September 23, 2003, William Jackson wrote a column for Editor & Publisher about Miller claiming special “security clearances” during the hunt for unconventional weapons in Iraq earlier that year.

Team leader Navy Cdr. David Beckett of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, in a brief phone conversation, sarcastically dismissed the idea of her “supposedly having some sort of clearance.” However, Colonel McPhee, the overall task force commander, is known to have said that Miller was “cleared at the secret level.” Regardless, it was generally believed and commonly said in the field that Miller was cleared for information classified “secret.” Either she pulled off a hoax, or a very unusual clearance for a journalist was granted by some Pentagon authority.

One or the other; both seem bad to me. Jackson found out more:

Barton Gellman of the Washington Post spent one day on the scene with Miller, accompanying a nuclear survey team at the Tuwaitha site at the beginning of May. Some of the soldiers asked whether Gellman had a “secret” clearance, “as Judy did.”

“I said I had no such clearance, but did have the commander’s permission to be there,” Gellman told me. “The team leader, Navy Cdr. Beckett, did talk to me” but Gellman was asked to step away from a conversation about a classified matter. “I heard Judy tell him, ‘I’m cleared for that, but he isn’t.’”

Hmmm. Back then her story was: “I’m cleared for that, he isn’t.” Thursday in the Times the story was: Miller signed the same form other reporters would have signed— “with some modifications.” Whatever that means. I’ve said it before: At the New York Times all Judy Miller news comes in code. The silences speak more clearly than the sentences. And that hasn’t changed with the publication of the Tellsome Report on Oct. 16. It’s still Kremlinology for readers of the (scant) coverage.

Miller in the New York Times, Oct. 16: You know, maybe I still had the clearance when I talked to Libby. Or maybe he just thought I did. It’s possible. Both are possible. Fitzgerald asked me that too. Did I know if I had clearance? I told him I didn’t know.

MSNBC on Miller’s claims, Oct. 18: The CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, and Pentagon all say they “have no idea what New York Times reporter Judith Miller was talking about.”

Miller in the New York Times, Oct. 20: Oh yeah, I had temporary access under rules set by the military unit I was attached to in Iraq during the weapons hunt. I remember it now. I signed that nondisclosure thing that everyone else signed. With modifications. Right. No clearances.

These are the moves of a writer trying to prevent the onset of clarity. Her prose is code, she talks only in code; and the heart of her unbelievable story is a kind of code dance with insider Lewis Libby. Information, according to the science of it, is a measure of uncertainty reduced. But have you noticed yet that whenever Judy Miller is quoted on the Miller case our uncertainty is increased? (See Murray Waas’s latest on Miller’s weaseling with the prosecutor.)

Here’s a report from the summer of 2003 by Charles Layton in American Journalism Review. We have many sightings of this type.

In the weeks leading up to the war, Miller pulled off a journalistic coup that took her competitors by surprise. She talked her way into getting a secret clearance from the Pentagon and then being embedded with the 75th Exploitation Task Force in Iraq, whose teams were specially trained and equipped to look for germ, chemical and nuclear-related materials. In March, when Bob Drogin of the Los Angeles Times began seeing Miller’s stories about the activities of this special unit, he realized that “she was in a great position to get the initial confirmation in the field” when Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction were found, as everyone assumed they would be.

Who put her into that “great” position, and what were the terms of the deal? That’s a piece of the puzzle. What are the chances that Fitzgerald doesn’t have that piece in hand? Very low. (See this from Jane Hamsher on how thorough he is.) We already know from Miller and others that Fitzgerald is asking about classified information and her status legally to receive it.

Miller in her account: “I told the grand jury I thought that at our July 8 meeting I might have expressed frustration to Mr. Libby that I was not permitted to discuss with editors some of the more sensitive information about Iraq.” Not permitted because she had “clearance” and they did not? Seems she is saying that. I mentioned the confusion in my note to Mathis, asking (pleading) “Can the Times clear this up?”

In another letter to Romenesko—you see, a lot of people are interested in this—Bill Lynch, a retired CBS News correspondent, said:

There is one enormous journalism scandal hidden in Judith Miller’s Oct. 16th first person article about the (perhaps lesser) CIA leak scandal. And that is Ms. Miller’s revelation that she was granted a DoD security clearance while embedded with the WMD search team in Iraq in 2003.

I agree about the scandal, if it turns out she did have some official clearance from on high. (The White House Iraq Group is one possibility. Donald Rumsfeld another. Or both.) Lynch thinks out loud:

One must assume that Ms. Miller was required to sign a standard and legally binding agreement that she would never divulge classified information to which she became privy, without risk of criminal prosecution. And she apparently plans to adhere to the letter of that self-censorship deal; witness her dilemma at being unable to share classified information with her editors.

Yeah, witness it. While “clearance” (not a wholly precise term, I realize) would allow Miller to see and discuss certain kinds of classified information, clearance would also require her to keep mum under threat of criminal prosecution. Lynch calls it a “binding obligation to withhold key facts the government deems secret, even when that information might contradict the reportable ‘facts.’”

Q. Do any other reporters for the Times or for any other news media outlets have security clearances as Miller reported she obtained as an embedded reporter in Iraq in 2003. (Typically, the process to obtain a security clearance takes considerable time to complete and is not routinely granted to anyone on the spur of the moment.) Did she in fact have such a clearance? How does the Times justify this apparent compromising of a reporter’s independence and even-handedness? Why would any newspaper want its national security reporter to be in a position of receiving classified information she can’t use and which the reporter then self-censors in order to avoid violating any secrecy regulations? Doesn’t being “part of the team” with a security clearance make it even more likely the reporter will emphasize what the administration wants reported?

Clearance is a terrible trade off: the reporter gets to know, but can’t tell the world unless the government says it’s okay, and if you slip up or don’t ask they can throw you in jail. What kind of journalist would count that an advantage?

I can think of one kind: a reporter who, working closely with sources inside government, had already agreed to submit all her copy to those officials for their approval anyway. Thinking it over, said reporter might say to rapidly rationalizing self: They’re making me pay the costs (in censorship.) I should get more of the benefits (in classified data.) Clearance at a higher level lets me see more of what they find. How can I push to publish the best stuff if I don’t know what they have?

And somewhere along in this line of reasoning “clearance” starts sounding good. Lynch on the bad:

It is not hard to imagine a defense lawyer being granted a security clearance to defend, say, an “enemy combatant.” When the lawyer gets access to classified information in the case, he discovers it is full of false or exculpatory information. But, because he’s signed the secrecy oath, there’s not a damn thing he can do except whine on the courthouse steps that his client is innocent but he can’t say why. A journalist should never be put in an equivalent position, but this is precisely what Ms. Miller has opened herself to.

His client is innocent but he can’t say why. Compare that to Miller: “I was not permitted to discuss with editors some of the more sensitive information about Iraq.” Similar, right? Still, we need to know: Was she just puffing herself up, boasting, trying to pull rank—all are in character—or was there something to her claims (many people heard them) that she had special clearance from officials near or at the top of the Pentagon?

Jack Shafer of Slate actually did a column about this in April, 2003. He was struck by a passage in one of Miller’s articles that seems even more striking to me today. It ran in the Times under Miller’s byline on April 21, 2003 (and you can read it.) Miller’s report said, in essence, that an Iraqi scientist had been found who knew a lot about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction. This also appeared:

Under the terms of her accreditation to report on the activities of MET Alpha, this reporter was not permitted to interview the scientist or visit his home. Nor was she permitted to write about the discovery of the scientist for three days, and the copy was then submitted for a check by military officials.

Those officials asked that details of what chemicals were uncovered be deleted. They said they feared that such information could jeopardize the scientist’s safety by identifying the part of the weapons program where he worked.

Which everyone thought was strange at the time. Now it’s a little more explicable. An editor at the Times felt compelled to explain the extraordinary level of censorship the newspaper had accepted as part of Judy Miller’s agreement with… whomever.

Accepted in exchange for what? We don’t know. But the answer would seem to be: extrordinary journalistic access, deep inside the war-justifying, evidence-finding machine. The Shafer column is called “Deep Miller: Did the New York Times just change the rules of journalism?”

I’ve read a lot of news stories in my time, and a fair chunk of the reporting from Iraq, but terms of accreditation to report is a new piece of journalistic jargon to me. Is it Miller’s way of saying she’s an embed, and as an embed she’s agreed not to divulge any information that may harm the “operational security” of an ongoing military action?

Or is Miller implying that she struck a more complex ad hoc deal with MET Alpha? (I think she is.) It’s quite a deal when you read the story closely. She agreed not to interview the scientist, visit his home, divulge his identity, write about the MET Alpha for three days, or disclose the composition of the chemicals. And, most pungently, she consented to pre-publication review—oh, hell, let’s call it censorship!—of her story by military officials.

Why would the Times agree to a deal like that? I don’t know that it would. I don’t know that it did. (That’s why I asked Mathis my question.) But imagine the “bait” is an unusually close, extraordinarily dramatic Judy Miller look at international truth capture during the all-out hunt for Saddam’s weapons, which might include the discovery of nuke-making machinery. Starts to become realer. Shafer:

Did the “military officials” who checked her story require her to redact parts of the story, or did she do so on her own accord? Were any other “terms of accreditation” imposed on Miller? Other levels of censorship? Are other Times reporters filing dispatches under similar “terms of accreditation”? When and where were the terms of accreditation negotiated? Where are they stated?

Good questions all. His antennae went up for a reason. The Times in April 2003 was still trying to keep its contract with readers. It signaled to us that it had some special deal going on with this reporter, unusual enough to require formal explanation in the paper: “Under the terms of her accreditation to report on the activities of MET Alpha, this reporter was not permitted…”

It’s another example of the shimmer, as I called it in an earlier post. (After Joan Didion: “images that shimmer around the edges.”)

Finally, in Franklin Foer’s lengthy and informative profile of Miller in New York magazine, he tracks down Eugene Pomeroy, a public affairs officer for MET Alpha: “According to Pomeroy, as well as an editor at the Times, Miller had helped negotiate her own embedding agreement with the Pentagon—an agreement so sensitive that, according to one Times editor, Rumsfeld himself signed off on it.” Oh, really? A Times editor, huh?

That’s my tour through some of the reasons I have for wanting an answer to my two-part question. (I also sent it to Barney Calame, the public editor of the Times.) Plus the reason former Times-man and Sulzberger family biographer Alex Jones gave on the PBS Newshour: “Judy Miller’s credibility and the New York Times’ credibility are the same thing right now in my opinion.”

1.) Did Judith Miller, as a reporter for the Times in 2003, have any special security clearances that would have allowed her to handle types of classified information off limits to other reporters and editors of the Times?

2.) If so, what did the publisher and executive editor know about such clearances and where they came from?

Mathis has replied with: Jay, did you see the newspaper? That’s just the trouble. I did.

Since the Times won’t give me any real information, the kind that reduces uncertainty, I can only guess. Let’s take a leap from what we know, and speculate: Judy Miller did have special clearances, higher than reporters get when embedded, that allowed her to see classified information as part of a deal, but she and some people at the Times feel the deal would look terrible in light of what we know today.

Possibly… her clearance was obtained for a specific mission in Iraq, and went inactive when she left the country.

Possibly… Lewis Libby or someone in the White House Iraq Group had it re-activated— for a reason, for a price.

Possibly… if Judy Miller, alone among Times reporters, had this highly unusual clearance that allowed her to know what the government had going on, but she couldn’t print any of it unless they said so, then this—their selective say so—may account for why her reporting in 2002 and 2003 seemed to follow a line.

Possibly… if Judy Miller promised to deliver great stories with her unheard-of access (price: near total censorship) this might account for “Miss Run Amok,” and for Bill Keller’s plea, “she kept kind of drifting on her own back into the national security realm,” and for the special treatment she was afforded. It’s not hard to imagine a “Judy’s seen the cables, have you?” game played successfully with editors against doubters inside the Times. That could be why the Washington bureau feels slighted and ignored— and baffled.

Possibly… other Times reporters tried to warn the editors that Miller’s reporting was being contradicted, but they weren’t believed because—it was secretly believed at the top—Judy had the classified material, the real access, the gold. Maybe her sources trumped everyone else’s sources, but no one who knew this could talk about why, and this engendered the secrecy—and mistrust—that is so much a part of this case.

Possibly… when Miller says “I told an editor we should do a story, but I can’t say who…” she means “the one editor I was permitted to discuss classified information with.” Which (sorry) wasn’t you, Jill Abramson. You didn’t know about it. You weren’t supposed to.

Possibly (I’m just speculating) the wish to keep hidden the extraordinary clearance explains why Miller wanted no part of Libby’s waiver, until she could get terms that would let her keep the actual scope of the deal hidden. But maybe when she got to the grand jury Fitzgerald knew all about her status, and this is why she can’t tell a consistent story from Sunday to Thursday.

Possibly…

Well, you get the point. It would explain a lot.

After Matter:Notes, reactions & links…

UPDATE, Oct. 22, significant news for my post: Times public editor Barney Calame tried to get an answer to the same question: what about these “clearances” Judith Miller said she had? He reports that he couldn’t nail it down. “Couldn’t” by the deadline for his column, he means. He will keep asking.

That tells me there’s a story there. It also tells me the Times knows it has to answer, most likely in a news story about Miller, possibly through the public editor.

The Times at Bay: Armchair Critic Speculates (Oct. 12): “Everything has to wait until the moment when Judy ‘can be expected to tell what happened,’ as Landman so carefully put it. When it comes and she still refuses the hierarchy will turn a whiter shade of pale. Key people will then know their investment in Miller went terribly wrong.”

The Shimmer: Missing Data at the New York Times (Oct. 10): “Whereas a week ago, I was calling it ‘Judy Miller’s New York Times’ to emphasize how she seemed to be the actor-in-chief, I now think it’s more than that: a bigger unknown is affecting things. Not only is the Times not operating properly, it’s unable to say to readers: here’s why we’re not.”

News Comes in Code: Judy Miller’s Return to the Times (Oct. 4): “Just one man’s opinion, but now is a good time to say it: The New York Times is not any longer—in my mind—the greatest newspaper in the land. Nor is it the base line for the public narrative that it once was. Some time in the last year or so I moved the Washington Post into that position…”

Judith Miller and Her Times (Oct. 2): “Notice how it affects what the New York Times, a great institution, can tell the public, and yet Judy’s decision was hers: personal when she made it (her conditions weren’t met), personal when she changed it (her conditions were met.) That’s what I mean by Miller’s Times.”

Hi, Jay. When I started working on this on Sunday (has it really been less than a week?!?) -- the security clearance thing set off all sorts of alarms for me. You have the AJR piece that I found - but I also found this:

Writing in New York Magazine in July 2004, Franklin Foer shed light not only on Miller's reporting techniques (strictly based on relationships) but also on her status as an embedded reporter in Iraq -- a position which was approved by Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and which required that she agree to let DoD censor every story...

That is my paraphrase ... followed by an excerpt from the piece, which includes quotes from the public information officer associated with MET Alpha.

The fact that the NYT isn't answering your question speaks loudly and causes great sadness. I lost my faith in Time when I was a "youngster" reading Luce ... now this incident has shaken my faith in the integrity of the NYT. How does it view its mission : as a watchdog of the gov't or as an enabler?

Let's see if the Times keeps Miller on board -- that will tell us whether or not the Times itself is in bed with the government and is just making believe that it's being put in an awkward spot. Maybe that's why Miller was heard yelling at Keller: she knew Keller had been writing columns saying we needed to go into Iraq and thus she knew that he was part of the governmental propaganda team himself

One thing I didn't see covered in this post is the fact that in the June meeeting with Libby, Miller was given information from the still-classified NIE document "Iraq's Continuing Programs For Weapons of Mass Destruction." That document was partially declassified later and a redacted version released to the public. Judy:

As I told Mr. Fitzgerald, Mr. Libby also cited a National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, produced by American intelligence agencies in October 2002, which he said had firmly concluded that Iraq was seeking uranium.

An unclassified version of that estimate had been made public before my interviews with Mr. Libby. [Lie. Oops, "mistake."] I told Mr. Fitzgerald that I had pressed Mr. Libby to discuss additional information that was in the more detailed, classified version of the estimate. I said I had told Mr. Libby that if The Times was going to do an article, the newspaper needed more than a recap of the administration's weapons arguments. According to my interview notes, though, it appears that Mr. Libby said little more than that the assessments of the classified estimate were even stronger than those in the unclassified version.

In Miller's NY Times account, this information comers under the "Second Meeting with Libby" section, which occurred on July 8, 2003. The NIE referred to here was declassified on July 18, 2003.

Fitzgerald was clearly interested in whether or not Judy had seen the still-classified NIE:

Mr. Fitzgerald asked if I had discussed classified information with Mr. Libby. I said I believed so, but could not be sure. He asked how Mr. Libby treated classified information. I said, Very carefully.

Mr. Fitzgerald asked me to examine a series of documents. Though I could not identify them with certainty, I said that some seemed familiar, and that they might be excerpts from the National Intelligence Estimate of Iraq's weapons. Mr. Fitzgerald asked whether Mr. Libby had shown any of the documents to me. I said no, I didn't think so. I thought I remembered him at one point reading from a piece of paper he pulled from his pocket.

I told Mr. Fitzgerald that Mr. Libby might have thought I still had security clearance, given my special embedded status in Iraq. At the same time, I told the grand jury I thought that at our July 8 meeting I might have expressed frustration to Mr. Libby that I was not permitted to discuss with editors some of the more sensitive information about Iraq.

Mr. Fitzgerald asked me if I knew whether I was cleared to discuss classified information at the time of my meetings with Mr. Libby. I said I did not know.

All three of Judy's conversations with Libby occurred before the NIE was declassified.

One consideration Miller might have had when negotiating her clearance (whatever that might have been) is that information that is censored during sensitive combat and search operations might well be declassified later -- and if it were, she had a big jump on the story.

Given the mission of the unit with which she was embedded, it would not have been unreasonable to expect that a scenario like that was quite likely to occur, since publicly-usable evidence of WMD presence would certainly have been releasable.

Nor would such an agreement necessarily prevented her from, say, breaking her agreement and going public if she saw wrongdoing (like faking the presence of WMD) -legally she would be liable, but it's hard to imagine her not getting off and getting huge support if things had played out that way.

Either way the possibility of a big story that she owned seemed possible, maybe likely. Not surprising she might push for the clearance, whatever form it might have taken.

Wampun looks at the history of Miller and finds some points that may suggest that Miller has dubious "secret" relation with the government since long years ago.

"In late-August-early-September, 1985, Miller took an unexplained two week hiatus, which just happened to coincide with the first secret US-Israeli-Iranian discussions in Paris of the arms-for-hostages plan. A month after returning to Cairo, Miller begans writing more and more about European, particularly French, politics. In late October, Miller's articles are dominated by France, France, France. As it turns out, Miller moved her base of operations to Paris, where she continued to cover the Middle East, while including some European coverage as well.

It is at that time that Bob Woodward revealed in a Washington Post article(1) that Miller was being used by John Poindexter to spread propaganda in the US's new "disinformation campaign" against Libyan president Omar el-Qaddafi. In 1986, Miller published a number of pieces such as "Qaddafi Also Facing Homegrown Opposition" (April 20, 1986) and "Many Faces of Qaddafi: Showman and Survivor" (June 14, 1986) which use material provided to Miller directly from Poindexter: Miller wrote that Qadaffi was barely in control politically, that he was clinically depressed, and addicted to drugs. Miller went on to claim Qadaffi propositioned her, but backed off when he learned her father was Jewish. All of this, despite the fact that less than a year before, she'd penned a piece for the Times entitled, "Challenges to Qaddafi Discounted" (Nov 13, 1985)."

"Or is Miller implying that she struck a more complex ad hoc deal with MET Alpha? (I think she is.) It’s quite a deal when you read the story closely. She agreed not to interview the scientist, visit his home, divulge his identity, write about the MET Alpha for three days, or disclose the composition of the chemicals. And, most pungently, she consented to pre-publication review—oh, hell, let’s call it censorship!—of her story by military officials."

Did Judy Miller "negotiate" an agreement with someone in this administration whereby she was allowed to "embed" in a WMD search unit because she agreed to publish stories put out by the administration with her by-line on it, and pretend that she was prohibited from reporting the "facts" by her "security clearance?" How convenient for both Miller and Rumsfeld...or is it Cheney? How humiliating for the Times publisher and editors. But, frankly, I think all of Jay's brilliant coverage of this issue points precisely in that direction. It would explain Miller's current obfuscation. Let's find out...

As just a side note, DoD's apparent interest in getting Miller embedded with MET alpha in the search for Saddam's WMD puts into doubt the meme of "the Adminsitration lied about Saddam having WMD".

If anything, this mess about Miller's possible special access to what was expected to be an important moment in history - "finding the WMD" - only proves that the administration sincerely believed that they existed.

The story is pretty clear at this point. Miller had the same official clearance as every other embedded reporter. However, she had connections to senior officers that allowed her to dictate the nature of her access more than other reporters did.

In fact, her connections were such that she was able to get embedded with a team that had a real chance of actually discovering the actual weapons of mass destruction. While there were no further formal restrictions on her reporting, she agreed to, essentially, preapproval of all her work in exchange for this access. She may or may not have told the Times this, but it is unlikely they would have said "No." She was going to be at the site when the weapons were found. Too good a story.

The fact that the story she filed last weekened was a pile of incoherent mish-mosh, and stupidly referred to her "clearances" doesn't change much of this. Between being the heroine of a gripping story of press freedom, protecting Libby and the putative other source, and getting her lawyers to clear the piece, getting a coherent set of facts into the piece just fell by the wayside.

What the New York Times has not figured out yet is that Judith Miller is an extreme example of the unreliable narrator. She increases our doubt in the story as she tells it.

These are the moves of a writer trying to prevent the onset of clarity. Her prose is code, she talks only in code; and the heart of her unbelievable story is a kind of code dance with insider Lewis Libby. Information, according to the science of it, is a measure of uncertainty reduced. But have you noticed yet that whenever Judy Miller is quoted on the Miller case our uncertainty is increased?

Now if you read those words in a John LeCarre novel, instead of at Press Think, you would have no doubt what was being described: A mole, inserted into the enemy camp to sow confusion and disseminate falsehoods.

"It is still not publicly known who first told the columnist Robert D. Novak the identity of the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson. Mr. Novak identified her in a column on July 14, 2003, using her maiden name, Valerie Plame. Mr. Fitzgerald knows the identity of this source, a person who is not believed to work at the White House, the lawyers said."

Arianna Huffington and others might have the scoop here: Is this *source* Judith Miller?

My understanding is that the censorship restrictions were not unique to Judith Miller, but applied to all embedded reporters who accompanied the military on unusually sensitive missions.

According to a 2003 E&P article, the DOD rules said:

"In instances where a unit commander or the
designated representative determines that coverage of a story will involve exposure to sensitive information beyond the scope
of what may be protected by prebriefing or debriefing, but coverage of which is in the best interests of the [Department of
Defense], the commander may offer access if the reporter agrees to a security review of their coverage. Agreement to security review in exchange for this type of access must be strictly
voluntary and if the reporter does not agree, then access may not be granted."

If anything, this mess about Miller's possible special access to what was expected to be an important moment in history - "finding the WMD" - only proves that the administration sincerely believed that they existed.

au contraire. By the time the war started, it was pretty well established that no actual functioning WMDs would be discovered. There was probably an assumption that something would turn up --- like leaky vata of contaminated growth medium that had accidentally not been destroyed by Iraq in 1991 --- and giving Miller special access to MET Alpha ensure that the most sinister possible spin would be placed on the discovery.

This was Miller's role as a "journalist" -- to ensure that all information concerning WMDs that was released to the public was presented in a manner most advantgeous to the Bush regime's policies. There is a reason why in May 2004 60% of Americans still believed that Iraq had WMDs ---- Judy Miller kept telling the American people that "all the evidence" proved they did.

********************

It seems to me that the lack of an answer to Jay's questions is because the Times doesn't really know the answers to his questions. We know that Miller was granted access to tons of classified materials even before she was embedded --- and my theory is that she told her editors that she was sworn to secrecy about much of the evidence she saw that "backed up" was she was "allowed" to write about.

Whether Miller had an "official" security clearance may not be as relevant as the fact that the Times allowed her to operate as if she did have such a clearance, and that her reporting could not be questioned because of her "special access."

you smell...trolly, so i will be brief: this case is in reference to our government. the CNN was in reference to a foreign government. so we here in AMERICA are more interested in the far more important story of how an AMERICAN journalist was in cahoots with an AMERICAN government. does that make sense? are you creating a false equivalence you found on a right-wing blog somehwere?

Steve got to the word "mole" before I had a chance to. But google for Mighty Wurlitzer. Over the years, we've seen Newt Gingrich restore the Mighty Wurlitzer into tool of the right-wing think tanks and their government representatives.

I don't understand why more journalists are only hinting around about this with respect to Miller.

"Deputy Director Frank Wisner proudly referred to the CIA's worldwide propaganda machine as "the mighty Wurlitzer." And indeed, the agency's skill at murdering people is matched only by its ability to murder the truth.

The CIA has published literally hundreds of books that spread its party line on the Cold War. It was particularly proud of The Penikovsky Papers, supposedly the memoirs of a KGB defector but actually completely ghostwritten by CIA scribes. A bit more embarrassing was Claire Sterling's book which advanced the now-discredited theory that the Russians were behind the 1981 attempt on the life of Pope John Paul II. Even the popular Fodor's Travel Guides started as a CIA front.

The CIA also owns dozens of newspapers and magazines the world over. These not only provide cover for their agents but allow them to plant misinformation that regularly makes it back to the US through the wire services. The CIA has even placed agents on guard at the wire services, to prevent inconvenient facts from being disseminated.

In 1977, famed Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein revealed that over 400 US journalists had been employed by the CIA. These ranged from freelancers who were paid for regular debriefings, to actual CIA officers who worked under deep cover. Nearly every major US news organization has had spooks on the payroll, usually with the cooperation of top management.
The three most valuable media assets the CIA could count on were William Paley's CBS, Arthur Sulzberger's New York Times and Henry Luce's Time/Life empire. All three bent over backwards promoting the picture of Oswald as a lone nut in the JFK assassination.

Among prominent journalists who've worked knowingly with the CIA are National Review founder William F. Buckley, PBS interviewer Bill Moyers, the late columnist Stewart Alsop, former Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee and Ms. magazine founder Gloria Steinem.
Bernstein's landmark article on the CIA and the media told of the agency's frantic efforts to limit Congressional inquiry into the matter, with claims that "some of the biggest names in journalism could get smeared." And while the CIA director at the time, George Bush, made a not-too-convincing show of discontinuing the agency's manipulation of the media, it's clear that the CIA regards the space between your ears as one of its most important battlefields."

I have to admit I thought the whole "judy-has-security-clearance" angle was just a red herring. I honestly thought she was just bragging about something like a non-disclosure agreement.

But you make a good case that there's probably *something* more there than an NDA. In fact if there was, it would help explain my confusion about Miller's motivation in lying to Keller about her involvement with the Plame case (because such an agreement WOULD make her look bad. WOULD get her in trouble--both ethically and legally--and it gives her the better motivation to be the most mysterious one of all the reporters who had access to the Plame-name-game.

That was the thing I never understood about Judy was if she wasn't the problem, why lie to her boss. But if she got some kind of agreement behind the backs of her editor, or knows that disclosure of such an agreement really would make her look like another gay-male-protestute-in-the-briefing-room, I could easily see why should would lie to everyone but her lawyer.

politicaobscura: As just a side note, DoD's apparent interest in getting Miller
embedded with MET alpha in the search for Saddam's WMD puts into doubt the
meme of "the Adminsitration lied about Saddam having WMD".

One might find this note slightly more convincing if
DoD had "embedded," say, Sy Hersh, as opposed to Judy Miller.

In both cases it seems that news organization make "arrangements" with a government for better access as long as the news organization told a "good" story. In both cases the news organization agreed and followed the arrangement.

I am not worried about "left/right" wing here. I assume that there are journalist that are aligned with ANY American administration that will cover or not cover aspects of their policies. Can you name one administration that has NOT done that?

I am worried about the ethics of news organizations and the reliabilty of what they report and how they can be tied to any government.

Robert, can you truthfully say that if CNN was on the tube everyday talking about and showing the atrocities of Sadaam's that AMERICAN's perception Iraq would not be different?

I don't want to make this the government's problem. I want to make this the news organization's problem so that they will not be entangled in this type of predicament in the future.

I'm not sure whether I want the proportion of Miller-worry hereabouts to be about the same as the Miller-worry in Fitzgerald's work.
If it is, then we may find we can't figure out what was going on until we know what Miller was up to.
And, here's a hoot, maybe what she was up to is classified so that Fitz can't say anything about it publicly, which means he can't use it.
Anyway, in this investigation, Miller manages to be in three places at once. If her doings are classified so that Fitz is shackled, that would be four places where her influence is felt.
And she wrote nothing.
How's that for leveraging your work?

The issue of security clearance raised a giant red flag on Sunday. In an otherwise unspectacular report, that was the issue screaming with further questions. These were mine:

1) Who granted the clearance?
2) What were the conditions of said clearance?
3) Is this SOP for national security reporters or embeds?
4) Why would an editor go along with such clearance and any such conditions if he or she knew such clearance and conditions existed?
5) If Judith Miller was pulled from the national security beat after the WMD fiasco, didn't she then have an obligation to turn over what she knew to the next reporter? (Maybe I'm being naive because as a freelancer it's been a long time since I worked in the newsroom environment.)
6) What does this situation tell us about the hazards of so-called "superstar" reporters?
7) Did Judith Miller believe her sources were sharing information with HER or with the New York Times?

Guess I'm still trying to get my head around the idea that she was allowed to "run amok" for so long.

Thanks to all the bloggers who are following up and doing some reporting on her reporting. Now if only the Times will come clean. Otherwise The Gray Lady risks looking like nothing more than a charwoman covered in Judith Miller soot.

Robert, can you truthfully say that if CNN was on the tube everyday talking about and showing the atrocities of Sadaam's that AMERICAN's perception Iraq would not be different?

wow! this is an entire school of red herrings.

The fact that CNN did not report on human rights abuses in Iraq does not mean that the American people lacked coverage of such atrocities --- certainly not those of us who are actually concerned about human rights abuses wherever they occur, and don't use "human rights" as a blugeon to condemn whichever nation we want to invade this week (while ignoring abuses done by our "friends").

Nor would CNN be reporting on those abuses "every day" --- Michael Jackson, OJ Simpson, and Monica Lewinsky would have taken precedence. (Moreover, I doubt if you would have wanted CNN reporting on the significantly improved human rights climate in Iraq in the years just prior to the invasion.)

Plamegate is in no way equivalent to CNN's failure to cover Saddam's abuses. Miller was spreading disinformation designed specifically to advance the Bush regime agenda. CNN was not spreading false propaganda designed to advance Iraq's agenda so that CNN could maintain its Iraqi bureau.

Therefore one way to establish whether Miller had a (real) clearance would be to find out whether a background check was done.

If she had a proper clearance we would know about it by now. DOD investigators talk to everyone you put on your form, employers, former employers, coworkers, neighbors, neighbors at previous addresses. Someone would have come forward by now.

I am still working on the theory that she was simply bragging. But the Defense Dept. should be able to answer this, so it might make as much sense to go to them rather than the NYT. Incidentally I think Mathis is doing a fine job.

If I were Time, The Washington Post, or NBC news I would take this opportunity, while all attention is focused on Miller, to go public with all contact on Plame. It is going to come out in the trial anyway, better to get it out soon.

I think it is reasonably safe to assume that Fitzgerald has all the documents relating to Miller, including any clearance she may have had or absence of the same.

Novak's source is Porter Goss, he was on House INTEl at the time and made a guest appearance on CNN's crossfire the week of the outing.

He knew Valerie Plame worked for the CIA. He knew her as Valerie Plame. He'd most likely refer to her as valerie Plame, not as Valerie Wilson.
Ambassador Wilson, when asked why the Plame name was used instead of WIlson, reasons that it was someone who knew her in that time she worked under her maiden name.

He would not say whether the use of her maiden name belies intent, only that it stood to reason that it was someone with proximity to her at that time, and still in the DC/beltway loop. Goss fills the bill.

The reason Miller is quiet is that she heard or disclosed or witnessed disclosure to Ahmed Chalabi, other members of the Iraq Survey Group and Iraqi National Congress.

They're foreign agents, she saw information not privvy to based on previous disclosure issues in her background(the Libyan stories re: Col.K).

She should not have been given any clearance. Nor should Rove, both were allowed to look in and compromise INTEL.

They got the ball rolling once Goss helped background Plame with the White House.

Today’s post... will be my last for a while. (Of course, others should try to get the answers I was seeking.)

I’m taking a break from blogging to finish my book, which has a new title: By the People. Rather than say “blogging will be light…” I thought it was best to shut down until the book is completed. PressThink will be back, but not before December 1....

From the June 7, 2004 issue of New York Magazine:
Eugene Pomeroy, a former National Guard soldier is now working in Baghdad as a contractor for a security firm. During the war, Pomeroy served as the public-affairs officer for MET Alpha. This meant that he had one primary duty: to shepherd Judy Miller around Iraq.
According to Pomeroy, as well as an editor at the Times, Miller had helped negotiate her own embedding agreement with the Pentagon—an agreement so sensitive that, according to one Times editor, Rumsfeld himself signed off on it. Although she never fully acknowledged the specific terms of that arrangement in her articles, they were as stringent as any conditions imposed on any reporter in Iraq.

"the far more important story of how an AMERICAN journalist was in cahoots with an AMERICAN government"

"Far more" imposrtant than AMERICAN journalists in cahoots with a HOSTILE FOREIGN government?

This is a rather odd choice of what's newsworthy and important. I don't want to assume that you're anti-american, treasonous, or any of the other epithets right-wingers sometimes thrown at journalists these day, but that leaves me totally puzzled.

So please explain to me - I'm sincere, I really want to know - how is it that you figure one journalist in the pocket of George Bush is worse than an entire network in the pocket of Saddam Hussein?

We the people didn't vote for Saddam Hussein, didn't pay Saddam Hussein's salary, and were not directly affected by Saddam Hussein's decisions. He was not sworn to preserve, protect, and defend the US Constitution. He had no obligation to tell the American people the truth about anything.

George Bush, on the other hand, is sworn to do all of those things. He works for us. The press is protected by the Constitution because the press is supposed to be our watchdog to make sure that our employee is doing his job.

When CNN got in bed with Saddam Hussein, other networks could and did fill the void. When Judith Miller got in bed with the administration, she both abdicated her own role as watchdog and made it more difficult for other reporters to fulfill their watchdog roles.

Put another way, the CNN incident shows that CNN is corrupt. The Miller incident shows that the US government is corrupt. See the difference?

... I missed what should have been significant alarm bells. Until Fitzgerald came after her, I didn’t know that Judy had been one of the reporters on the receiving end of the anti-Wilson whisper campaign. I should have wondered why I was learning this from the special counsel, a year after the fact. (In November of 2003 Phil Taubman tried to ascertain whether any of our correspondents had been offered similar leaks. As we reported last Sunday, Judy seems to have misled Phil Taubman about the extent of her involvement.) This alone should have been enough to make me probe deeper.

But the best part is this, which in a way responds to PressThink's description: it became Judy Miller's newspaper.

Dick Stevenson has expressed the larger lesson here in an e-mail that strikes me as just right: “I think there is, or should be, a contract between the paper and its reporters. The contract holds that the paper will go to the mat to back them up institutionally -- but only to the degree that the reporter has lived up to his or her end of the bargain, specifically to have conducted him or herself in a way consistent with our legal, ethical and journalistic standards, to have been open and candid with the paper about sources, mistakes, conflicts and the like, and generally to deserve having the reputations of all of us put behind him or her....

Miller did not conduct herself this way. Stevenson's point puts the lie to a lazy formulation that came from the editorial page, but Keller picked it up. You don't get to "choose" your cases. Stevenson's law says: we have to use good judgment, and not just go on "principle."

"When CNN got in bed with Saddam Hussein, other networks could and did fill the void. When Judith Miller got in bed with the administration, she both abdicated her own role as watchdog and made it more difficult for other reporters to fulfill their watchdog roles."

How so? How did Miller interfere with other journalists in a way that Jordan did not?

I certainly agree that Bush doing bad things is my problem in a way that Hussein doing bad things is not. But that's not what I'm talking about. The peculiar difference in outrage that I'm pointed out is that press people seem far madder at Miller than they were at Jordan.

Looking at the behavior of the journalists in question - is being coopted by a US President who may be somewhat corrupt and not particularly bright, but is by no means the worst we've ever had really a worse sin than being coopted by a mass murderer?

Look Phelan, no one was co-opted by a mass murderer except Ronald Reagan, Rumsfeld and George HW Bush. CNN was trying to figure out how to operate and a totalitarian environment or has that fact escaped you? Jordan voiced an unfortunate opinion that was only backed up by evidence of US incompetence and not deliberate action. He got hosed for that.

Miller appeared on C-Span todat and spj conference and was incredulous to the whole thing. It's just a protect the anon source thing to her. As for what this says, it doesn't unfortunately shed any light on who the leaker was. That was the gist of the CJR article I just read. In part at least.

How did Miller interfere with other journalists? Read the rest of the discussion. The NYT has been unable to report on the Plame investigation because of Miller's legal difficulties. There is some evidence that Miller's access to "better" sources affected NYT reporting going all the way back to the pre-war debate.

In the bigger picture, this administration has a pattern of stonewalling journalists at every opportunity. Bush himself almost never holds press conferences, and the White House daily press briefings read like someone bobbing and weaving in front of a grand jury. Reporters like Miller make that kind of stonewalling easier by parroting the administration line.

In the even bigger picture, remember that this whole investigation is about blowing the cover of a covert operative. Remember all the 9/11 postmortems talking about inadequate information on Al Qaeda? Covert operatives are how you get that kind of information. (As conservatives are fond of reminding us, in fact.) Anyone who participated in the Plame leak had a much more direct effect on US anti-terror capabilities than anything CNN and Saddam might have cooked up.

Another telling link between Judith Miller and the sell-the-war effort is her intersection with the "PR" firm Hill & Knowlton, who fabricated the infamous Kuwaiti babies in incubators propaganda. See for example, this Alexander Cockburn piece.

Did anyone else read the full transcript of Larry Wilkerson's speech last week to the New American Foundation, in which he denounced the 'Cheney-Rumsfeld Cabal'? Here's an interesting excerpt from his comments:

"Now, on the other matter, I’ve been over that so many times in my head and with hundreds of journalists who are trying to figure it out for themselves – I can’t tell you why the French, the Germans, the Brits and us thought that most of the material, if not all of it, that we presented at the U.N. on 5 February 2003 was the truth. I can’t. I’ve wrestled with it. I don’t know – and people say, well, INR dissented. That’s a bunch of bull. INR dissented that the nuclear program was up and running. That’s all INR dissented on. They were right there with the chems and the bios. Carl Ford and I talked; Tom Finger and I talked, who is now John Negroponte’s deputy, and that was the way INR felt. And, frankly, I wasn’t all that convinced by the evidence I’d seen that he had a nuclear program other than the software. That is to say there are some discs or there were some scientists and so forth but he hadn’t reconstituted it. He was going to wait until the international tension was off of him, until the sanctions were down, and then he was going to go back – certainly go back to all of his programs. I mean, I was convinced of that.

But I saw satellite evidence, and I’ve looked at satellite pictures for much of my career. I saw information that would lead me to believe that Saddam Hussein, at least on occasion, was spoofing us, was giving us disinformation. When you see a satellite photograph of all the signs of the chemical weapons ASP – Ammunition Supply Point – with chemical weapons, and you match all those signs with your matrix on what should show a chemical ASP, and they’re there, you have to conclude that it’s a chemical ASP, especially when you see the next satellite photograph which shows the U.N. inspectors wheeling in in their white vehicles with black markings on them to that same ASP and everything is changed, everything is clean. None of those signs are there anymore.

Well, Saddam Hussein really cared about deterring the Persians – the Iranians – and his own people. He didn’t give a hang about us except on occasion. And so he had to convince those audiences that he still was a powerful man. So who better to do that through than the INC, Ahmad Chalabi and his boys, and by spoofing our eyes in the sky and our little HUMINT, and the Brits and the French and the Germans, too. That’s all I can figure.

The consensus of the intelligence community was overwhelming. I can still hear George Tenet telling me, and telling my boss in the bowels of the CIA, that the information we were delivering – which we had called considerably – we had called it very much – we had thrown whole reams of paper out that the White House had created. But George was convinced, John McLaughlin was convinced that what we were presented was accurate. And contrary to what you were hearing in the papers and other places, one of the best relationships we had in fighting terrorists and in intelligence in general was with guess who? The French. In fact, it was probably the best. And they were right there with us.

In fact, I’ll just cite one more thing. The French came in in the middle of my deliberations at the CIA and said, we have just spun aluminum tubes, and by god, we did it to this RPM, et cetera, et cetera, and it was all, you know, proof positive that the aluminum tubes were not for mortar casings or artillery casings, they were for centrifuges. Otherwise, why would you have such exquisite instruments? We were wrong. We were wrong."

So is that little detail that the VP's daughter--now at State--conveyed to White House staff the message to throw a Times reporter off the plane, passing along the information that her dad was pretty mad at the New York Times. Maybe what looks like a plot to silence Wilson had something to do with making the Times look bad.

Only discovered your site and you are taking a break - never mind. The debate will continue. I get a sense if anything that people are underestimating the media revolution that is taking place...fantastic site...

Yes, to me, too. Would you care to elaborate on what you found interesting about it?

Both the MSM and the Blogosphere have focused pretty consistently, however partisan some interpretations have been, on his denouncement of the so-called "cabal." However, what struck me as most illuminating were those comments I had quoted above, especially his disclosure that the French had apparently bolstered Administration concerns about the purposes of the aluminum tubes, evidently about the same time Powell was preparing his speech to the U.N. What has since particularly struck me about this is the fact that neither the MSM nor the Blogosphere has reported that nugget (I've been checking), although it seems to me that an even-handed retrospective evaluation of the Administration's making of its case for invading Iraq in early 2003 (which I personally still view as having been precipitous) demands engaging with Wilkerson's contention about the French and the aluminum tubes, especially in the context in which he revealed this information -- a scathing critique overall.

Jay, doesn't this strike you -- given the current focus in the MSM of the question of whether the Administration misled the public -- as a rather odd "oversight"? It certainly undermines my confidence in the MSM's capacity to fully inform the public.

"So is that little detail that the VP's daughter--now at State--conveyed to White House staff the message to throw a Times reporter off the plane, passing along the information that her dad was pretty mad at the New York Times. Maybe what looks like a plot to silence Wilson had something to do with making the Times look bad."

It struck me as a daughter familiar with her father's temperament and current temper intervening -- albeit inappropriately -- to prevent further tensions from accumulating too soon. I've been in situations in the past with clients where a particular paper's reporting was perceived by managment as being so egregiously wrong or slanted as to be hostile, which management took rather too personally. Those who serve management will often, in such cases, perceive it as defusing the situation to keep such a reporter at bay until the affronted manager has been able to gain some perspective. I don't know whether that was the case with this incident, of course, or what Ms. Cheney intended, but it's the kind of thing I witnessed on more than one occasion when representing clients in newsworthy matters.

"Turns out that public editor Barney Calame was himself unable to get an answer to my question about Miller's clearances. What does that tell you?"

I'm no fan of Ms. Miller's, but didn't she respond to that in the 10-21-05 NYTimes story "Journalists Testify in Favor of Shield Law":

"I told Mr. Fitzgerald that Mr. Libby might have thought I still had security clearance, given my special embedded status in Iraq," Ms. Miller wrote, referring to Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor leading the C.I.A. leak investigation.

Some Pentagon officials and journalists questioned whether her arrangement was actually what many journalists covering the Iraq war had: a written agreement to see and hear classified information but treat it as off the record unless an ad hoc arrangement was reached with military hosts.

In a telephone interview Wednesday, Ms. Miller said this so-called nondisclosure form was precisely what she had signed, with some modifications, adding that what she had meant to say in her published account was that she had had temporary access to classified information under rules set by her unit.

Ms. Miller said that under the conditions set by the commander of the unit, Col. Richard R. McPhee, she had been allowed to discuss her most secret reporting with only the senior-most editors of The Times, who at the time were Howell Raines, the executive editor, and Gerald M. Boyd, the managing editor.

When asked if she had ever left the impression with sources, including Mr. Libby, that she had access to classified information after leaving her assignment in Iraq, Ms. Miller said she could not recall. "I don't remember if I ever told him I was disembedded," she said. "I might not have." But she added, "I never misled anybody." "

(emphasis mine)

What does that not answer about your question and Barney Calame's, Jay? What am I missing?

What are you missing? Everything I wrote in my post. If Miller only signed a non-disclosure form why did she write about her "clearances" last Sunday? Why did Fitzgerald ask about them? Why did she tell numerous people in Iraq that she had clearances others did not have, and she was cleared from the top? Thursday's account multiplies the questions; it didn't answer them.

I don't understand why Miller agreeing to not divulge classified information would be bad, especially compared to news organizations trading access to evil regimes for truly soft reporting (what was it CNN in Baghdad?).

"If Miller only signed a non-disclosure form why did she write about her "clearances" last Sunday?"

Perhaps because they're not inconsistent usages? I just re-read your post and perhaps I can, as someone who once, in my former capacity as corporate legal counsel to an entity that dealt with classified information and who therefore had to receive "clearance" herself -- as well as to sign a non-disclosure form -- shed some light on the question.

Looking at your questions to the Times once again, I personally would find them very difficult to answer were I the Times. You had asked,

"Did Judith Miller, as a reporter for the Times in 2003, have any special security clearances that would have allowed her to handle types of classified information off limits to other reporters and editors of the Times? Her first-person account seems to say that Judy Miller herself doesn’t know if she had such clearances."

What does "special" mean? "Secret"? "Top secret"?

Classified information is categorized as "confidential," "secret," "top secret" and -- much, much more rarely --
"Sensitive Compartmented Information" (SCI) or Special Access Programs (SAP). I think it's very safe to assume that neither SCI nor SAP information applied in Ms Miller's case, since only very senior members of the military and the government have access to such information, from what I understand, outside the intelligence agencies. However, whatever level of classified information to which someone is granted official access, one is required to receive a "security clearance," in addition to signing a non-disclosure form.

When the clearance is for either "confidential," "secret" or "top secret" information, the person is required to complete and submit a "Standard Form 86, Questionnaire for National Security." If the access to be granted is to "confidential" or "secret" information, the SF 86 must be completed for the last five years and if access is sought to "top secret," for the last 10 years. A person's signature on and submission of the SF 86 authorizes the Defense Security Service to complete a background check, although the extent of the background check will be much greater if the access to be granted is to "top secret" information. It's identical for both "confidential" and "secret" information.

The lower level security clearance for both "confidential" and "secret" information involves a computerized search of information in the files of Federal agencies, a review of non-Federal law enforcement records and a credit record review. Only for a "top secret" clearance does the DSS conduct the very expensive "single scope review," which involves field interviews of family, neighbors, employers, etc.; review of court records, etc.; and an extensive personal interview with the applicant. A single scope review is extremely expensive, but is not required for access to "secret" information, much less "confidential" information.

Now, one other problem with that question is that it's couched in a manner that presumes that the Times has knowledge of whether other reporters and editors of the Times have received "confidential" or "secret" clearances, although I'm not sure how the Times would know that with any certainty. Any reporter who was "embedded" at any time within the last five years, for example, might have received such a clearance -- which might arguably still be legally effective -- but some might have been given access only to "confidential" information, others to "secret" information. It wouldn't surprise me, for example, if the reporters themselves weren't certain, if the posts here and the MSM reports themselves on Ms. Miller's level of clearance that I've seen so far are any indication. As I understand it, any reporter who sought to be embedded had to complete and submit an SF 86.

The other part of your question that I would consider unanswerable by the Times or by Ms. Miller is whether Ms Miller was permitted to "handle types of classified information off limits to other reporters and editors." The difficulty is that even after someone has received a clearance to receive access to "confidential" or "secret" information, it's still only on a "need to know" basis -- which is something that only the military and the government can determine. How is the Times to reply to that, except by referral to Ms. Miller's statement:

"Ms. Miller said that under the conditions set by the commander of the unit, Col. Richard R. McPhee, she had been allowed to discuss her most secret reporting with only the senior-most editors of The Times, who at the time were Howell Raines, the executive editor, and Gerald M. Boyd, the managing editor."

So Col. McPhee, according to this, had determined that Ms. Miller could discuss her reporting with Raines and Boyd, which implies they were viewed as being on a "need-to-know" footing. But does that imply they, too, had received security clearances? If you're the Times, how do you ascertain that at this point with any certainty in order to respond to the question accurately? Raines has left the Times, I understand.

"Why did Fitzgerald ask about them?"

I would imagine because she had received access to classified information, and that determining her level of clearance was a necessary step to determine whether she was an appropriate recipient. If, for example, Libby had shared "secret" information with her only after ascertaining that she had clearance to receive "secret" information, that might bear on whether a legally permisible or impermissible disclosure had occurred. I can think of another half-dozen possibilities, but the point is that her level of clearance and Libby's knowledge of that level of clearance might be legally relevant facts.

"Why did she tell numerous people in Iraq that she had clearances others did not have, and she was cleared from the top?"

A lawyer would say this assumes a fact not yet in evidence. Had it instead been phrased "Did she tell numerous people in Iraq that she had clearances others did not have, and if so was she cleared from the top?" it might have been answerable, but wouldn't a reliable answer require either an admission by Ms Miller or interviews by the Times of such "numerous people"?

"Thursday's account multiplies the questions; it didn't answer them."

There are certainly some things that have been answered, but I doubt the Times can answer others, at least as they've been posed so far.

You are being obtuse, or lawyerly or both. I'm quite sure my question could have been better phrased, but everyone in journalism understands it. And they understand it at the New York Times, too. Barney Calame spent several days trying to get an answer, and he couldn't. I will simplify it for you:

* Plenty of embedded reporters in Iraq signed waivers, also called nondisclosure forms.

* A waiver is not a security clearance, which is more formal and requires a background check.

* Reporters do not have clearances; and it's bad for them to have clearances. It would be alarming if she did have a clearance. It would suggest she is part of the government team.

* Miller spoke of having clearance in her first person account. She said Fitzgerald asked about it too. In Iraq she told people she had clearance at the "secret" level, and many people in the military thought she did.

* But in Thursday's Times--after the controversy started--she said it was just a nondisclosure form.

So which is it? That is the question.

It is nonsense to say the Times cannot answer the question. And if it has no idea whether one of its reporters had a clearance to see classified information and keep it secret forever, that's a problem. I think they're scrambling to try to find out whether she did or didn't.

I think what Wilkerson was saying is the Bush team is different-- they're radicals, and took things way outside the bounds American foreign policy has moved in since Eisenhower.

A few things I've dredged from the bazillion words I've read about Miller/Times/Plame/Rove:

Wisest thing I've seen so far is from Jeff Jarvis: "...journalism is about learning, not teaching."

Most hilarious thing I've seen so far is from another blog and this comment: "(It is) amusing to see (Maureen) Dowd complain that New York Times staffers are allowed to write all sorts of absurd things without editorial supervision..."

Most smirk-inducing revelation is that for 5 years we have been told by the elite press that the Bush WH is the most secretive White House in modern history. But if we are to believe all we know so far about the Fitzgerald investigation (mostly gained from "leaks" har!har!) the Bush WH leaked like a sieve (as did every other WH for that matter).

Most suprising aspect is that Jay has not folded all this into his pet theory of "GWB's Plot To Decertify The Press". Bill Keller has already announced the Fitzgerald investigation has had a "chilling effect" (a term that should be banned from polite conversation, in my view) on sources coming forward with information, even though, of course, it was "anonymous sources" telling him this. Also David Sanger's article yesterday about how business is done in DC (one of the most enlightening articles done about this) and the "chilling effect" it is having on the synergy between officials and reporters, yes even officials from the "most secretive White House in Modern History (TM)". So even if GWB has to send Scooter and Rove down the swirlie, so what? His aim of "decertification" (TM) has been advanced. I can't believe you missed this Jay!

Perhaps the reason I missed it is: I don't fold things into pet theories. At least I try to avoid it. However, if I were I would say: keep the empty Scott McClellan briefings in mind when you contemplate the information underworld with White House sources and reporters. The policy is designed to force more and more serious reporting into a confidential realm where a handful of executive branch insiders gain maximum freedom and minimum accountability. It worked pretty well too, until the grand jury began.

My apologies, Jay, I meant "pet theory" to be descriptive, not dismissive. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

But I think you reinforced my point in your last comment that the everyday synergy between government officials and the press has been hurt by this Plame business. I'm looking at the long term here, not just the Bush Administration.

I could be wrong about what you meant, however (wouldn't be the first time).

We need to keep the press from being absorbed into The Media. This means keeping the word press, which is antiquated. But included under its modern umbrella should be all who do the serious work in journalism, regardless of the technology used. The people who will invent the next press in America--and who are doing it now online--continue an experiment at least 250 years old. It has a powerful social history and political legend attached...

The People Formerly Known as the Audience: "You don't own the eyeballs. You don't own the press, which is now divided into pro and amateur zones. You don't control production on the new platform, which isn't one-way. There's a new balance of power between you and us." More...

Migration Point for the Press Tribe: "Like reluctant migrants everywhere, the people in the news tribe have to decide what to take with them. When to leave. Where to land. They have to figure out what is essential to their way of life. They have to ask if what they know is portable." More...

Bloggers vs. Journalists is Over: "Here is one advantage bloggers have in the struggle for reputation-- for the user's trust. They are closer to the transaction where trust gets built up on the Web. There's a big difference between tapping a built-up asset, like the St. Pete Times 'brand,' and creating it from scratch." More...

"Where's the Business Model for News, People?" "It’s remarkable to me how many accomplished producers of those goods the future production of which is in doubt are still at the stage of asking other people, “How are we going to pay our reporters if you guys don’t want to pay for our news?'" More...

National Explainer: A Job for Journalists on the Demand Side of News
This American Life's great mortgage crisis explainer, The Giant Pool of Money, suggests that "information" and "explanation" ought to be reversed in our order of thought. Especially as we contemplate new news systems. More...

The Beast Without a Brain: Why Horse Race Journalism Works for Journalists and Fails Us. "Just so you know, 'the media' has no mind. It cannot make decisions. Which means it does not 'get behind' candidates. It does not decide to oppose your guy… or gal. It is a beast without a brain. Most of the time, it doesn’t know what it’s doing.." More...

They're Not in Your Club but They Are in Your League: Firedoglake at the Libby Trial: "I’m just advising Newsroom Joe and Jill: make room for FDL in your own ideas about what’s coming on, news-wise. Don’t let your own formula (blog=opinion) fake you out. A conspiracy of the like minded to find out what happened when the national news media isn’t inclined to tell us might be way more practical than you think." More...

Twilight of the Curmudgeon Class: "We’re at the twilight of the curmudgeon class in newsrooms and J-schools. (Though they can still do a lot of damage.) You know they’re giving up when they no longer bother to inform themselves about what they themselves say is happening." More...

Getting the Politics of the Press Right: Walter Pincus Rips into Newsroom Neutrality "The important thing is to show integrity-- not to be a neuter, politically. And having good facts that hold up is a bigger advantage than claiming to reflect all sides equally well." More...

A Most Useful Definition of Citizen Journalism "It's mine, but it should be yours. Can we take the quote marks off now? Can we remove the 'so-called' from in front? With video!." More...

The Master Narrative in Journalism: "Were 'winning' to somehow be removed or retired as the operating system for news, campaign reporting would immediately become harder to do, not because there would be no news, but rather no common, repeatable instructions for deciding what is a key development in the story, a turning point, a surprise, a trend. Master narratives are thus harder to alter than they are to apprehend. For how do you keep the story running while a switch is made?" More...

He Said, She Said Journalism: Lame Formula in the Land of the Active User "Any good blogger, competing journalist or alert press critic can spot and publicize false balance and the lame acceptance of fact-free spin. Do users really want to be left helpless in sorting out who's faking it more? The he said, she said form says they do, but I say decline has set in." More...

Users-Know-More-than-We-Do Journalism: "It's a "put up or shut up" moment for open source methods in public interest reporting. Can we take good ideas like... distributed knowledge, social networks, collaborative editing, the wisdom of crowds, citizen journalism, pro-am reporting... and put them to work to break news?" More...

Introducing NewAssignment.Net: "Enterprise reporting goes pro-am. Assignments are open sourced. They begin online. Reporters working with smart users and blogging editors get the story the pack wouldn't, couldn't or didn't." More...

What I Learned from Assignment Zero "Here are my coordinates for the territory we need to be searching. I got them from doing a distributed trend story with Wired.com and thinking through the results." More...

If Bloggers Had No Ethics Blogging Would Have Failed, But it Didn't. So Let's Get a Clue: "Those in journalism who want to bring ethics to blogging ought to start with why people trust (some) bloggers, not with an ethics template made for a prior platform operating as a closed system in a one-to-many world." More...

The View From Nowhere: "Occupy the reasonable middle between two markers for 'vocal critic,' and critics look ridiculous charging you with bias. Their symmetrical existence feels like proof of an underlying hysteria. Their mutually incompatible charges seem to cancel each other out. The minute evidence they marshall even shows a touch of fanaticism." More...

Rollback: "This White House doesn't settle for managing the news--what used to be called 'feeding the beast'--because there is a larger aim: to roll back the press as a player within the executive branch, to make it less important in running the White House and governing the country." More...

Retreat from Empiricism: On Ron Suskind's Scoop: ""Realist, a classic term in foreign policy debates, and reality-based, which is not a classic term but more of an instant classic, are different ideas. We shouldn't fuzz them up. The press is capable of doing that because it never came to terms with what Suskind reported in 2004." More...

Karl Rove and the Religion of the Washington Press: "Savviness--that quality of being shrewd, practical, well-informed, perceptive, ironic, 'with it,' and unsentimental in all things political--is, in a sense, their professional religion. They make a cult of it. And it was this cult that Karl Rove understood and exploited for political gain." More...

Journalism Is Itself a Religion: "We're headed, I think, for schism, tumult and divide as the religion of the American press meets the upheavals in global politics and public media that are well underway. Changing around us are the terms on which authority can be established by journalists. The Net is opening things up, shifting the power to publish around. Consumers are becoming producers, readers can be writers." More...

News Turns from a Lecture to a Conversation: "Some of the pressure the blogs are putting on journalists shows up, then, in the demand for "news as conversation," more of a back-and-forth, less of a pronouncement. This is an idea with long roots in academic journalism that suddenly (as in this year) jumped the track to become part of the news industry's internal dialogue." More...

Two Washington Posts May Be Better Than One: "They're not equals, but Washington and Arlington have their own spheres. Over the newspaper and reporting beats Len Downie is king. Over the website Jim Brady is sovereign. Over the userï¿½s experience no one has total control. There's tension because there's supposed to be tension." More...

Laying the Newspaper Gently Down to Die: "An industry that won't move until it is certain of days as good as its golden past is effectively dead, from a strategic point of view. Besides, there is an alternative if you don't have the faith or will or courage needed to accept reality and deal. The alternative is to drive the property to a profitable demise." More...

Grokking Woodward: "Woodward and Bernstein of 1972-74 didn't have such access, and this probably influenced--for the better--their view of what Nixon and his men were capable of. Watergate wasn't broken by reporters who had entree to the inner corridors of power. It was two guys on the Metro Desk." More...

Maybe Media Bias Has Become a Dumb Debate: "This here is a post for practically everyone in the game of seizing on media bias and denouncing it, which is part of our popular culture, and of course a loud part of our politics. And this is especially for the 'we're fair and balanced, you're not' crowd, wherever I may have located you." More...

Bill O'Reilly and the Paranoid Style in News: "O'Reilly feeds off his own resentments--the establishment sneering at Inside Edition--and like Howard Beale, the 'mad prophet of the airwaves,' his resentments are enlarged by the medium into public grievances among a mass of Americans unfairly denied voice." More...

Thoughts on the Killing of a Young Correspondent: "Among foreign correspondents, there is a phrase: 'parachuting in.' That's when a reporter drops into foreign territory during an emergency, without much preparation, staying only as long as the story remains big. The high profile people who might parachute in are called Bigfoots in the jargon of network news. The problem with being a Bigfoot, of course, is that it's hard to walk in other people's shoes." More...

The News From Iraq is Not Too Negative. But it is Too Narrow: "The bias charges are getting more serious lately as the stakes rise in Iraq and the election. But there is something lacking in press coverage, and it may be time for wise journalists to assess it. The re-building story has gone missing. And without it, how can we judge the job Bush is doing?." More...

The Abyss of Observation Alone. "There are hidden moral hazards in the ethic of neutral observation and the belief in a professional 'role' that transcends other loyalties. I think there is an abyss to observation alone. And I feel it has something to do with why more people don't trust journalists. They don't trust that abyss." More...

"Find Some New Information and Put it Into Your Post." Standards for Pro-Am Journalism at OffTheBus: "Opinion based on information 'everyone' has is less valuable than opinion journalism based on information that you dug up, originated, or pieced together. So it’s not important to us that contributors keep opinion out. What’s important is that they put new information in. More...

Out in the Great Wide Open: Maybe you heard about the implosion of Wide Open, a political blog started by the Cleveland Plain Dealer with four "outside" voices brought in from the ranks of Ohio bloggers: two left, two right. Twelve points you may not have seen elsewhere." More...

Some Bloggers Meet the Bosses From Big Media: "What capacity for product development do news organizations show? Zip. How are they on nurturing innovation? Terrible. Is there an entreprenurial spirit in newsrooms? No. Do smart young people ever come in and overturn everything? Never." More...

Notes and Comment on BlogHer 2005 "I think the happiest conference goers at BlogHer were probably the newbies, people who want to start blogging or just did. They got a lot of good information and advice. Some of the best information was actually dispensed in response to the fears provoked by blogging, which shouldnï¿½t be avoided, the sages said, but examined, turned around, defused, and creatively shrunk.." More...

Top Ten List: What's Radical About the Weblog Form in Journalism? "The weblog comes out of the gift economy, whereas most of today's journalism comes out of the market economy." More...

A Second Top Ten List: What's Conservative About the Weblog Form in Journalism? "The quality of any weblog in journalism depends greatly on its fidelity to age old newsroom commandments like check facts, check links, spell things correctly, be accurate, be timely, quote fairly." More...

Blogging is About Making and Changing Minds: "Sure, weblogs are good for making statements, big and small. But they also force re-statement. Yes, they're opinion forming. But they are equally good at unforming opinion, breaking it down, stretching it out." More...

The Weblog: An Extremely Democratic Form in Journalism "It's pirate radio, legalized; it's public access coming closer to life. Inside the borders of Blogistan (a real place with all the problems of a real place) we're closer to a vision of 'producer democracy' than we are to any of the consumerist views that long ago took hold in the mass media, including much of the journalism presented on that platform." More...

No One Owns Journalism: "And Big Media doesn't entirely own the press, because if it did then the First Amendment, which mentions the press, would belong to Big Media. And it doesn't. These things were always true. The weblog doesn't change them. It just opens up an outlet to the sea. Which in turn extends 'the press' to the desk in the bedroom of the suburban mom, where she blogs at night." More...

Brain Food for BloggerCon: Journalism and Weblogging in Their Corrected Fullness "Blogging is one universe. Its standard unit is the post, its strengths are the link and the low costs of entry, which means lots of voices. Jounalism is another universe. Its standard unit is "the story." Its strengths are in reporting, verification and access-- as in getting your calls returned." More...

Dispatches From the Un-Journalists: "Journalists think good information leads to opinion and argument. It's a logical sequence. Bloggers think that good argument and strong opinion cause people to seek information, an equally logical sequence. What do the bloggers bring to this? My short answer to the press is: everything you have removed."More...

Political Jihad and the American Blog: Chris Satullo Raises the Stakes "Journalists, you can stop worrying about bloggers 'replacing' the traditional news media. We're grist for their mill, says Satullo, a mill that doesn't run without us. Bloggers consume and extend the shelf life of our reporting, and they scrutinize it at a new level of intensity.."More...

Raze Spin Alley, That Strange Creation of the Press: "Spin Alley, an invention of the American press and politicos, shows that the system we have is in certain ways a partnership between the press and insiders in politics. They come together to mount the ritual. An intelligent nation is entitled to ask if the partners are engaged in public service when they bring to life their invention... Alternative thesis: they are in a pact of mutual convenience that serves no intelligible public good." More...

Horse Race Now! Horse Race Tomorrow! Horse Race Forever!: "How is it you know you're the press? Because you have a pass that says PRESS, and people open the gate. The locker room doors admit you. The story must be inside that gate; that's why they give us credentials. We get closer. We tell the fans what's going on. And if this was your logic, Bill James tried to bust it. Fellahs, said he to the baseball press, you have to realize that you are the gate." More...

Psst.... The Press is a Player: "The answer, I think, involves an open secret in political journalism that has been recognized for at least 20 years. But it is never dealt with, probably because the costs of facing it head on seem larger than the light tax on honesty any open secret demands. The secret is this: pssst... the press is a player in the campaign. And even though it knows this, as everyone knows it, the professional code of the journalist contains no instructions in what the press could or should be playing for?" More...

Die, Strategy News: "I think it's a bankrupt form. It serves no clear purpose, has no sensible rationale. The journalists who offer us strategy news do not know what public service they are providing, why they are providing it, for whom it is intended, or how we are supposed to use this strange variety of news."More...

He Said, She Said, We Said: "When journalists avoid drawing open conclusions, they are more vulnerable to charges of covert bias, of having a concealed agenda, of not being up front about their perspective, of unfairly building a case (for, against) while pretending only to report 'what happened.'" More...

If Religion Writers Rode the Campaign Bus: "Maybe irony, backstage peaking and "de-mystify the process" only get you so far, and past that point they explain nothing. Puzzling through the convention story, because I'm heading right into it myself, made me to realize that journalism's contempt for ritual was deeply involved here. Ritual is newsless; therefore it must be meaningless. But is that really true?."More...

Convention Coverage is a Failed Regime and Bloggers Have Their Credentials: "No one knows what a political convention actually is, anymore, or why it takes 15,000 people to report on it. Two successive regimes for making sense of the event have collapsed; a third has not emerged. That's a good starting point for the webloggers credentialed in Boston. No investment in the old regime and its ironizing." More...

Philip Gourevitch: Campaign Reporting as Foreign Beat: "'A presidential election is a like a gigantic moving television show,' he said. It is the extreme opposite of an overlooked event. The show takes place inside a bubble, which is a security perimeter overseen by the Secret Service. If you go outside the bubble for any reason, you become a security risk until you are screened again by hand."More...

What Time is it in Political Journalism? "Adam Gopnik argued ten years ago that the press did not know who it was within politics, or what it stood for. There was a vacuum in journalism where political argument and imagination should be. Now there are signs that this absence of thought is ending." More...

Off the Grid Journalism: “The assignment was straightforward enough,” writes Marjie Lundstrom of the Sacramento Bee, “talk to people.” When a writer dissents from it or departs from it, the master narrative is a very real thing. Here are two examples: one from politics, one from music. More...

Questions and Answers About PressThink "The Web is good for many opposite things. For quick hitting information. For clicking across a field. For talk and interaction. It's also a depth finder, a memory device, a library, an editor. Not to use a weblog for extended analysis (because most users won't pick that option) is Web dumb but media smart. What's strange is that I try to write short, snappy things, but they turn into long ones." More...